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The Blues for LEDs
Corey Burger writes "Seems somebody rolled out of bed on the wrong side today. The Globe and Mail's Ian Johnson delivers up a rant about the ubiquity of the new blue LEDs."
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Sounds like this guy has too many new expensive gadgets that he should send to someone who appreciates it more.
But do they run linux?
Jay | http://oldos.org
So there.
I, for one, welcome our new blue LED overlords.
or
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
or
1. blue LEDS
2. ???
4. profit!
this
It really pisses me off.
The Blue sky has a piercing clarity that draws the eye immediately, and which can mesmerize. And at night, the stars shimmer, they twinkle, and they can be incredibly intense for such tiny points of light -- they're really quite beautiful. The problem is they're suddenly everywhere.
Sorry...I must've rolled out of bed the wrong side too.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
The Blue LED howto:
Part 1 - dimming.
1. Go to the hardware shop and pick up some masking tape.
2. Cut a piece sufficiently large to cover the offending LED
3. Place the tape over the LED
4. Repeat from step 2 until the LED is sufficiently dim.
Part 2 - Blocking
1. Go to the hardware shop and pick up a nice hammer drill and a drill bit of similar diameter as the LED
2. Turn the device with the LED off.
3. Drill the shit out of the LED*
*Or, drill the shit out of your eyes. Therefore, removing the need to block any other blue LEDS that you may have on your "look at me I am a techy" gadgets.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
Ian Johnson, I feel your pain. Why, just the other day, my butler Jeeves remarked to me, "Sir, I find myself incapable of sleeping ever since you installed your 100" plasma computer monitor. The blue LED keeps me up all night."
And I'm regretting giving the cleaning staff new blue-LED-equipped brooms last week. Those hundreds of dancing broom-handles put me in such a dreadful mood. How can I concentrate on exploiting those massively regressive tax-cuts when all those lights keep dancing in my brain?
Indeed.
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
... I saw this story accompanied by a ThinkGeek add for a "cool new LED clock" - blue, naturally :)
Have you ever stood in front of a SUN Fire 6800 cabinet? They have a big sucker of a SUN logo illuminated by those blue LEDs...
:-)
So shiny... Happy happy happy... Must drool and watch... can't resist...
I'm still waiting for the Octalus-like big mouth with needle-sharp fangs coming out of the cabinet snatching for my head
Yalla.
You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled.
I don't need a bright blue blast visually screaming "HEY! YOU! EVERYTHING'S OK! I'M STILL ON!" all day long.
The article was worth it because this line reminded me of Homer's Everything's OK Alarm:
BEEEEEEEP, BEEEEEEP, IT WILL KEEP GOING, BEEEEEEP, BEEEEEEEP, EVERY 5 SECONDS, BEEEEEEEP, BEEEEEEEP, UNLESS EVERYTHING'S NOT OK, BEEEEEEEP.
Now I'm going to spend all day searching through Simpsons tapes trying to find that episode.
At any rate, hasn't this guy heard of duct tape?
"None of us are as dumb as all of us." - meeting mantra
It's one thing to be able to cover up your own LEDs but try going to a LAN Party where no-one else thinks that blue HDD activity floodlights are a stupid idea.
Now that the damn things are all the rage the only game I ever get to play is Disk Activity 3: Arena
% mkdir
% ls -dF
but I swear nothing could make those things less blinding in most of these huge, high-sitting SUVs.
I have a hammer that disagrees with that statement.
Learn something new.
Dude, have you lost your coolness because of a colour? That sucks dude, I mean forget AIDS and wars and shit, you don't have a blue LED coolness thing now, that is hella worse man.....
I'm with you. I bought a computer case which nowhere did I get an indication that the LED was blue. I would have probably bought it anyway unless I knew how tight the beam focus was. The damn thing was bright enough to shine through a layer of diffuse celophane tape AND two layers of masking tape. It would still project a visible beam onto the opposite wall.
Apple kit comes with white LEDs. The worst one is the one on the front which indicates the machine is in standby mode by gently pulsating. The problem with this is that it's really hypnotic. First the machine goes into standby mode, then my brain does...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I swapped plain ol' leds for premium-priced blue ones not so long ago.. Now the reverse?
Why the hell do humans always take a good things way to damned far? Huh?!
Soda pop, sex, religion, blue leds, and on and on..
Sounds to me like someone's got a case of the (pre-)Mondays. ;)
"When you really don't feel like starting the week, does anyone ever say, "sounds like a case of the mondays"?"
"Naw man, shit, naw i believe you'd get your ass kicked sayin somethin like that..."
6. Throw it away when you realize you broke it.
Ok, most of this time this isn't a problem, but have you see how small some of those LEDs are these days? Most people are inexperianced with their iron and are not willing to drop molten metal inside of their several thousand dollar home theature equipment.
I read the internet for the articles.
ever hook up a stock LED to the power pack taken out of a polaroid camera.... LED went bright, then dim, then exploded hitting me above the eye with a chunk of plastic...
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I just went on a walking tour of the house, and I don't have a single thing with a blue LED in it. My crap is ancient. I'm poor. Jesus.
6. ....
7. Profit!
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
If he doesn't like blue LEDs, then he didn't really need to buy a new monitor, handheld scanner, webcam, USB hub, Bluetooth access point, WiFi adapter, desktop volume control for his speakers, external hard drive, video editing peripheral, keyboard, home theatre, wireless music gateway, USB keychain drive, and portable MP3 player, all apparently in the "recent months".
Ignoring the quantity of his purchases, it *is* really annoying that so many different devices, presumably from different manufacturers, would all be so-festooned.
But what really irks me is the idiots who put blue lights all over their cars - usually silly little Honda cars with 3" diameter coffee can exhaust tips (despite the 1" diameter pipe coming from the puny little 1.6L engine).
Blue side markers, taillights, parking lights? Non-conformant with SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers, look closely at your taillight lenses) standardized coloring and therefore dangerous. Illegal. Police should be cracking down on these the way they used to crack down on 50's hot-rodders who were putting the blue dots into their red taillights.
LEDs (especially blue) on calipers, brake rotors, rims, windshield washer nozzles - what are you, stupid? It might have looked a little neat the first time someone did it, but now it's every home-boy who doesn't know how to put on a baseball cap who is doing it. Why would you spend your money being a brainless clone, when instead you could save it to put a real motor into your Civic? (Now, if you've got a Civic with a 4-bolt mains Chevy 350 under the hood, *then* I'll be impressed - takes a little more skill to do that than to put silly lights on the car.)
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Ah, yes, the old "all diodes are light emitting . . . once" rule of electronics.
Nathan's blog
This product might be the solution you need
When I first got my new system, I was looking for the power button on the front of my subwoofer. Noticing the little button, looking directly at it, I pushed it in and was blinded by a furious, burning blue LED right above the fucking power button.
Now I like it, because even when I turn the lights off the blue glow of the subwoofer is good reading light.